de·tox·i·fy - To counteract or destroy the toxic properties of.
So what are we talking here? What are your toxic properties? I can keep this brief. Drink more water, get more exercise, cut out caffeine, refined sugar, saturated / hydrogenated / trans fats and get your 5-a-day.
Simple.
Please, if you are so inclined to find a diet, subscribe to a plan, pay for a programme etc, then be my guest, but the above sums it up in a nutritiously abundant nutshell.
My thoughts this month are more towards the toxicity of thought processes and behaviour. We can dilute, sweat out and purge our bodies of ingested baddies, but our mind is where everything is conceived.
This February I want you to sit down and list what, on a regular basis, gets you angry, depressed or deflated. It can be the commute, especially in a car, to work. It can be somebody you know. It can be the way somebody behaves. It can be just about anything that simply winds you up the wrong way.
Now I’d like you, next to that list (this list can be done in the mind, if you’re clever, but as I work in fitness…well you get my drift), to make a calm, objective decision as to:
Is it really that important? (the car in front didn’t indicate and I just spent 45 seconds screaming at the unknowing driver even though it made no difference to anything, at all, whatsoever)
Can I remove it or myself? (I go out every Thursday with this group and listen to the same bad / sexist / ignorant jokes from Dave and can’t sleep when I get home as I’m still reliving what I wish I could tell him)
Road rage is a classic learned response that becomes imbedded in the enraged. Once the pattern is set, it’s tough to break. The parallels to so much in life are abundant. There’s enough in life to stress us, so try and eliminate the pointless. If it’s not important, if we recognise it as pointless, then remove the pattern. Immediately stress levels lower…
If it’s a someone who is to blame on a regular basis, and you can avoid their presence, then simply do so. Recognise that this person can alter your happy thoughts, not simply during and after a meeting but perhaps for the hour or two leading up to it, so if you don’t have to be there, if an e-mail, a call or a rain check will suffice, why not avoid the bother?
What we are left with then is the necessary. The Chinese have a proverb, “What you can’t change, embrace.” This is the harder part, this is when we have to look for the positive, the silver lining, the truffle amongst the mud. If you can find it, and most people or situations have something worthy or worthwhile about them, then focus on this.
Soon you will be a Jedi master, a positive, up and attem, can do dude or dudette. It starts with a list, a process is formed, and behaviour is relearned.
Detoxify your mind this February, and smile.
Matthew Powell
Matthew has managed health and fitness teams and operations in 5 star resorts in the Caribbean and Middle East, run a personal training business for over 15 years and currently owns a fitness consultancy in South Wales and the West. He has worked with celebrities and some of the wealthiest men in the world whilst still keeping his hand in group exercise, teaching Indoor Cycle, Circuits, Fitness Yoga and combat based classes. Follow Matthew on twitter @mattypowell. www.quantumphysiques.co.uk
